Back in the day when DH and I first got married, he was paying BM in cash for everything. The bookkeeper in me put a stop to that and everything has been done with checks ever since for tracking purposes. Another thing I put a stop to? Handing over a wad of cash for school clothes every season. Instead of BM demanding a certain dollar amount, we started taking the kids shopping ourselves so that we could have more control over how our money was spent – plus it was nice to be able to help the kids pick stuff out and know what came from us.